Manos Tsangaris

Manos Tsangaris was born in Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1956 and studied composition and New Music Theatre with Mauricio Kagel and percussion with Christoph Caskel at the Cologne Academy of Music. His compositions are internationally acclaimed and have been performed at renowned festivals such as the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, the International Theatre Festival of Belgrade, the Musik-Biennale Berlin, the Biennale Venezia and the Donaueschinger Musiktage. Productions of his works have also appeared at theatres and opera houses in Cologne, New York, Mannheim, Dresden and Bielefeld.

Tsangaris lectured at the 1991 summer academy Civitella d’Agliano, in 2002 he taught transdisciplinary composition at Ny Musikk in Oslo and Stavanger, and in 2003 at the KlangKunstBühne of the Berlin University of the Arts. He was the advisor to the artistic director of the Cologne Theatre from 2002 to 2007 as well as a lecturer at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for Contemporary Music 2004 - 2010.

The first part of his new "Stationentheater" Batsheba. Eat the History! for actors, singers and ensemble was premiered at the State Opera House Unter den Linden in Berlin in May 2009. For the full cycle, Tsangaris was awarded the composition prize of the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg during the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2009.

In October 2009, he was appointed professor at the Academy of Music Dresden and was appointed full member of the Academy of the Arts, Berlin and was appointed as a full member of the Saxon Academy of the Arts the following year.

“The question how different medial human modes of perception can be connected in a sensible and meaningful way in a work of art is central for the compositional work of Manos Tsangaris. Therefore, the act of composing is not only related to the effort of putting things together (com-posing), but at the same time is related to the preceding experimental exploration of the interface at which medial connections are possible in the first place. The expansion of the traditional definition of what "composition" means leads to a multiplicity of results. Besides musical compositions, Tsangaris has in the past 25 years also created poems, prose, installations and visual works. Although his literal and visual works claim autonomy, their coming together and synthesis in a universally understood music theatre is the central moment of his artistic work.“ - Raoul Moerchen

On 25 May 2024 Manos Tsangaris has been appointed President of Akademie der Künste in Berlin.

Manos Tsangaris works are published by Edition Peters.

https://www.tsangaris.de